
May I be permitted to correct this report a touch?
"iOS users who fondle more than a slab now *and then* have an app to help them report the fact"
iOS users who fondle more than a slab now have an app to help them report the fact instantly, without having to compose the previously-requisite 140-character double entendre. I Just Made Love lets the user select the kind of relationship, and positions explored, then geotags the entry with a Google Maps mashup so everyone can …
The question on Gizmodo asks "Can somebody tell me what kind of helpless imbecile wants to broadcast where he or she just have had sex, down to the GPS location and sexual position?" is surely answered thus:
An iPhone owner
Nuff said!
(Paris: Well there is one download guaranteed)
I think this will mostly be used by sad dweebs who aren't doing anything. Or at least with anyone but themselves. It will be the latest version of the imaginary girlfriend.
And any chap (it seems to be aimed at chaps) who pauses to notify the world of his, erm, situation, risks joining the sad dweeb club about 5 seconds afterwards.
This post has been deleted by a moderator
I'm all for a laugh and definately for taking money from suckers prepared to pay for this sort of shite, but is this what the human race has come to? Making time to use an expensive gadget to record positions during your list of horizontal dance moves?
At this rate I don't think the human race will ever rise above that 37% we managed to get down our evolutionary path!
Messaging app Telegram, which came to prominence for offering end-to-end encryption that irritated governments, has celebrated passing 700 million active monthly users with a pastel-hued announcement: a paid Premium tier of service.
A Sunday post celebrates the 700 million user milestone by announcing a $4.99/month tier. The Premium tier distinguishes itself from the freebie plebeian tier with the ability to upload 4GB files, unthrottled downloads that come as fast as users' carriers will allow, and the chance to follow up to 1000 channels, create up to 20 chat folders each containing up to 200 chats, and to run four accounts in the Telegram app.
Paying punters will also get exclusive stickers and reactions and won't see ads once they sign up to hand over coin each month.
Another day, another legal claim against Apple for deliberately throttling the performance of its iPhones to save battery power.
This latest case was brought by Justin Gutmann, who has asked the UK's Competition Appeal Tribunal (CAT) to approve a collective action that could allow as many as 25 million Brits to claim compensation from the American technology giant. He claims the iGiant secretly degraded their smartphones' performance to make the battery power last longer.
Apple may therefore have to cough up an eye-popping £768 million ($927 million), Gutmann's lawyers estimated, Bloomberg first reported this week.
Singapore's Uber equivalent, Grab, has decided to offer its homegrown maps as a service and asserts it will offer faster and more accurate spatial services than the likes of Google and HERE Technologies.
The move comes hot on the wheels of the company's revelations that Big Tech did such a poor job mapping Southeast Asia that Grab built its own maps to power its sprawling ride-share and delivery empire.
Grab's head of engineering Philipp Kandal said existing maps weren't sufficiently accurate and were not frequently updated enough. Lack of detail was another issue as they didn't include information on what happens after the "last mile," when a delivery driver has parked and is making their way through a shopping mall or condo block.
Grab – the Singaporean ride-sharing app that beat Uber on its home turf – decided to develop its own maps because Big Tech's simply weren't up to the job, the company's head of product said at a conference in Singapore.
The decision to do so came after several incidents made it clear that mapping services were not sufficiently localized, explained Samir Kumar, speaking at a panel on the process of product development at the Asia Tech x Singapore conference (ATxSG).
Grab previously integrated Google Maps with its own platform, and has also used HERE Technologies, to determine estimated times of arrival (ETA).
The Chinese government has announced that it will again allow "platform companies" – Beijing's term for tech giants – to list on overseas stock markets, marking a loosening of restrictions on the sector.
"Platform companies will be encouraged to list on domestic and overseas markets in accordance with laws and regulations," announced premier Li Keqiang at an executive meeting of China's State Council – a body akin to cabinet in the USA or parliamentary democracies.
The statement comes a week after vice premier Liu He advocated technology and government cooperation and a digital economy that supports an opening to "the outside world" to around 100 members of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Congress (CPPCC).
Apple may ditch its exclusive Lightning port in favor of the more widely used USB-C for future iPhone models.
Apple analyst Ming-Chi Kuo predicted the shift on Wednesday, pointing out that the move would beef up the devices' wired connectivity, and shake up supply chains.
"My latest survey indicates that 2H23 new iPhone will abandon [the] Lightning port and switch to USB-C port. USB-C could improve iPhone's transfer and charging speed in hardware designs, but the final spec details still depend on iOS support," he said.
Column For the past six months I've been staring at the backside of my iPhone 13 Pro wondering what possessed Apple to build a Light Detection and Ranging (LIDAR) camera into its flagship smartphone.
It's not as though you need a time-of-flight depth camera, sensitive enough to chart the reflection time of individual photons, to create a great portrait. That's like swatting a fly with a flamethrower – fun, but ridiculous overkill. There are more than enough cameras on the back of my mobile to be able to map the depth of a scene – that's how Google does it on its Pixel phones. So what is Apple's intention here? Why go to all this trouble?
The answer lies beyond the iPhone, and points to what comes next.
Apple has warned developers it will remove their products from its App Stores if they've not been updated for three years.
A policy update issued last Friday explained apps that "fail to meet a minimal download threshold – meaning the app has not been downloaded at all or extremely few times during a rolling 12 month period" will also be at risk of deletion from the App Store. The policy applies to iOS, iPadOS and macOS.
Apple's justification for the stance is that refreshed apps "work for the vast majority of users and support our latest innovations in security and privacy". The company's announcement proudly states that Apple's attention to such matters has seen it remove 2.8 million apps from its digital storefronts over the last six years.
Foxconn, Taiwan's largest electronics manufacturer, has suspended operations at two factories just west of Shanghai in Kunshan City Country due to onsite COVID cases.
The two factories, Dianfa and Fuhong, make up half of Foxconn's Kunshan manufacturing campuses and were shut on April 20, according to a report from South China Morning Post.
Reuters reported that Kunshan operations of Foxconn Interconnect Technology, which makes data transmission equipment and connectors, will remain closed until the authorities give permission to restart.
Microsoft, a monopolist of yore that recently disallowed third-party browsers from handling a protocol associated with its Edge browser, has pledged to uphold a set of Open App Store Principles for the Microsoft Store on Windows and future game marketplaces.
"We have developed these principles in part to address Microsoft's growing role and responsibility as we start the process of seeking regulatory approval in capitals around the world for our acquisition of Activision Blizzard," said Microsoft president Brad Smith, in a blog post announcing Redmond's commitments.
Smith acknowledges that regulators around the world are looking to make app markets more competitive, and says that Microsoft wants to demonstrate that it's committed to adapting. In other words, the Windows giant really wants its $69bn deal for Activision Blizzard to be approved (and not do an Nvidia-Arm.) But Microsoft also sees an opportunity to level a playing field dominated by Apple and Google.
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